


The Hand that Feeds

by hauntedd



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Crueltide, Dark, Dom/sub Undertones, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, F/F, Foe Yay, Manipulation, Misses Clause Challenge, Revenge, Yuleporn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 00:13:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2831129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hauntedd/pseuds/hauntedd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To the victor go the spoils, and Rachel knows that she has spoiled things indeed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hand that Feeds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [botherd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/botherd/gifts).



“Perhaps you need some time, Rachel. A new perspective.”

These are the first words she hears upon waking—under oppressive florescent lights with only Marion’s condescension to greet her. Nothing about _Sarah_ or _Kira_ or her new eye. Just Marion droning on about Top Side and how she, Rachel, has made a mess of their objectives; of their relationship with the other subjects.

Rachel does not make a mess of things. Rachel knows that her objectives, **Dyad’s** objectives—they’re one and the same, really—are not her mess in truth. Rachel, no Dyad, wanted and she (they) took. Sarah had been in hand; **_caged like the animal she is_** —and then.

And then she wasn’t.

Instead, Rachel is here, at the Dyad, with a new eye, a new bed, and being asked to find a new perspective. To find time— _time for what, exactly?_ And yet this is suddenly her fault.

This is not her fault.

Sarah took—Sarah _**takes** (her father, her life, her fertility, her reality, her power, her eye)_ —and yet it is Rachel who must pick up the pieces.

“Of course, a new perspective,” Rachel begins, trying to find her footing when she is decidedly off balance. “And how would Top Side define that, hmm?”

“Oh, there will be time for that later,” Marion purrs, ignoring her question. She’s always been so patronizing, that one. 

“We need you healthy before we can bring you back into the fold.”

Rachel bites her lip, hard, at that, the metal aftertaste of blood on her tongue, burning her throat, reminding her not to speak. If she were another person—another subject—she might respond. If she were Sarah, it’d be sarcastic and biting, Cosima, something endearing and self-deprecating—but she is not these subjects.

She is more than a subject.

She is Rachel, so she will be silent and docile before her masters. 

And then she will plot her **_revenge_**.

***

She remembers the impact in the abstract. Glass shattering under foot, blood and marrow spattered across Blahniks and then darkness. Try as she might, she cannot remember the seconds before impact, just Sarah’s sheer terror and then a whoosh of air before waking.

The psychologist they’ve assigned to her says this is a good thing. Rachel doubts that this man has any skill at all, that he is just here to take notes on paper and submit them directly to Top Side as a measure of how she is progressing.

Rachel, of course, lies through her teeth and the visits become less frequent. A _good thing_ indeed.

In her solitude, Rachel tries to focus on the details and situations that brought her here. To this room, with an eye transplant from one of the spares they’d harvested.

It should bother her, wearing another subject’s eye like it’s her own, but she is unperturbed. She is groomed for this, to accept that there are hundreds of women _just like her_ but they are **not her** and some, when they are no longer useful, reside in the basement for this purpose. They are scraps, subjects with minimal purpose, too droll to monitor, too useless for anything else. 

Rachel had wanted Sarah to join them—an unmonitored tramp was useless to them, all those thirty years of data lost to Dyad—but she had been denied due to her impatience.

She will not make that mistake again. She will be patient; she will **wait**.

***

The psychologist, Doctor So-and-so—he is not in her pocket, not like Doctor Nealon, so she does not bother to learn his name—asks her, when he’s in one of his more inquisitive moods, who she thinks is responsible for her predicament. 

Rachel does not answer. This monitor-doctor is incompetent at best, she thinks, not for the first time, and waves his question off.

“Does it matter? I have a new eye. No lasting damage has occurred.”

The Doctor says nothing in response, but makes notes on his chart. She thinks that she sounds perfectly contrite, weakened, _**tamed**_. It is what they want, after all, and Rachel knows better than anyone to give it to them. Lose a battle, win a war.

But if she were to be honest, she knows who is to blame. All roads led to the unmonitored tramp—the independent variable—Sarah’s role in this is clear enough.

Sarah laid hands on her.

Rachel—no, _Daniel_ —laid hands on Sarah.

Sarah—no, _Helena_ —laid hands on Daniel. Blood is always thicker than you think.

Rachel took Sarah’s heart, her daughter. Daniel was, after all, the closest she had come to love.

Sarah ripped Rachel’s heart out with her bare hands. It wasn’t enough to have a child, no; Sarah took her father, too.

Rachel took her sister— _Cosima_ —and ruined her chance of survival. (Because Cosima is **_dead_** , even if they won’t tell her definitively; the silence she’d received in response to her inquiries is evidence enough.)

Sarah took her eye. But it never was about the eye. It was about the ovary, _her_ ovary, _her_ fertility. Dr. Nealon had confirmed that it was possible, that this transplant would work. It was all set up perfectly—and then.

Sarah had escaped. 

Of _course_ Rachel knows who is to blame, whom she will exact revenge upon, when the time is right. When the fools, the lesser copies, her would-be masters, all think she has grown docile Rachel will strike. But Rachel hasn’t gotten as far as she has by laying blame at one party alone. Rachel knows truths—Sarah had been in hand. Sarah had accomplices.

And Rachel will destroy them all.

***

She learns the chain of events in stages.

She’d sent Martin loose immediately after being cleared from the facility. She’d obtained the appropriate authorizations first, of course, through some lie about her recovery and coming to terms with everything. Doctor So-and-so had been easy to convince, some fabrication about post-traumatic stress disorder had him literally jumping to allow it—to be _useful_. 

The chain of events is distorted, fragmented, but Rachel now knows that it is not Sarah who bears the brunt of this.

Sarah had been hers—strapped to a gurney, the procedure scheduled and about to commence. She could not have arranged this, despite firing the trigger, and it is company cellphone records that tell the tale.

Delphine.

The text message that launched a thousand ships—even pawns can evolve and become knights, it seems.

Rachel scowls as she researches the facility in Frankfurt, the staff logs and swipe card protocols. Dr. Cormier is still there, in Frankfurt, a plum prize for the taking.

_I love her, and If you let her die without me, it is personal._

Those were her last words to Rachel, **_before_** , but they expose her weakness in a way that she had simply ignored the first go around. Love is a useless emotion so Rachel did not _think_ this to be a threat. (It is only useless to you, Rachel, it is very useful in controlling others.)

She will not repeat her error.

*** 

It starts with video. Carefully, oh so carefully, Rachel _recovers_ by watching security footage with her eyes, **both** of her eyes, and an excruciating amount of attention to detail.

She moves her hands slowly, rigidly, until the rhythm of a ghost she wishes to inhabit comes to her. It feels so unnatural, like she’s held a séance and yet there are no spirits here—only her, only **_Rachel_**. But Rachel is but a mask, one of several that Leda wears, and she has learned to take on others skin, wear it as her own.

The words come slower—her American accent more difficult to master than Sarah’s cockney lit to her posh English ears, but her mouth moves all the same, phrasing the words that fuse the mask to her skin.

 _Yeah._

**Ditto.**

**_Obs._ **

Her hair is easy, it’s grown long and dark during her captivity—no, recovery—and she pays a woman in an impoverished area to thread her hair into dreadlocks, tipping double for her silence the same evening she books her flight with a fake passport.

Cosima Neihaus is _dead_ but even lesser women can rise from the ashes when circumstances allow it.

***

Frankfurt welcomes her with skyscrapers to hide under, their shadows casting a wide net, basking her in darkness. It is not shadows she needs, just tricks of the light, but Rachel welcomes them all the same.

She takes a cab to Delphine’s apartment—because Cosima would not have a driver—and uses a spare key to enter. She is willing to suffer Cosima’s skin to an extent, but Rachel has to get her affairs in order, and her plan is multipronged and must be flawless in its execution.

Eventually, Rachel is finished. All her matters are settled and she rolls a joint— _Cosima would roll a joint_ —and settles into the utilitarian furniture and attempts to relax. The smoke swirls under her fingers and into her throat and Rachel laughs at her impending victory.

_My sexuality is not the most interesting thing about me._

No, Cosima, it is not, Rachel concedes, finally, silently; but it is the most useful. 

***

“Cosima—you, you are early!”

Early? What does she mean _early_? Cosima is **_dead_** unless, of course, they kept her miraculous survival from her as well. 

Cosima is _alive_. Of course they would keep it from her. Of course.

No matter. Rachel can _improvise_.

“Yeah, um, I wanted it to be a surprise?” Rachel replies, hoping that she can mimic Cosima’s awkwardness well enough now that it seems Delphine has been in contact with the real Cosima all along. 

“Quelle surprise!” Delphine giggles with a certain lightness in her eyes that Rachel has never witnessed firsthand. It seems that she has fallen for the performance or she is so desperate to see Cosima that she doesn’t look beyond what’s in front of her.

Rachel prefers the former—she has put a lot of work into this, after all. Although it certainly doesn’t matter how Delphine falls into her trap, so long as she does. 

“Yeah—I uh, missed you too,” Rachel smirks, wrapping her arms around the taller woman and drawing her in. She quite likes this, the feel of Delphine _so vulnerable, so unaware_ , and Rachel smirks against her mouth before kissing her.

Desperately.

Passionately.

Rachel scrapes Delphine’s bottom lip with her teeth, her nails pressing into the blonde’s shoulder. She will mark her; leave a reminder of her indiscretions for all to see.

She doubts this is how Cosima kisses, but she is **not** Cosima, and she must lay claim to what is hers.

Delphine is hers.

They are all hers. 

Rachel is superior—she has been bred to lead (the Dyad, the other subjects) to **dominate**. She will take and lay waste to those who get in her way.

“Cosima,” Delphine gasps airily, the innocent playfulness scrubbed from her tone, replaced by raised eyebrows and skepticism. But Rachel recognizes other things as well; the hunger, for one. 

Delphine likes this. Delphine _**wants**_ this and it frightens her like the doe-eyed fool that she is.

Good.  


Delphine should fear her, should quake and crumble in her presence. She is the **sum** of their _parts_ , (because Delphine is part of them now, not part of _her_ , not part of **_Dyad_** ) and she will claim whatever she wants however she wants it.  
“Sorry, I uh, got a bit carried away. It’s just—“

“No, I liked it.”

“Oh yeah?” Rachel asks in an attempt to mimic Cosima’s surprised victory. Rachel wouldn’t be shocked by this, but Cosima—she must keep this act up a while longer. Smiling as she steps closer, on her tip toes and pressing her lips against her cheek. “Do you want me to make you _beg_ Doctor Cormier?”

“A French woman does not beg,” Delphine whispers, her voice lower, huskier and Rachel thinks she might enjoy more than just the conquest.

“No?” Rachel teases, snaking a hand under Delphine’s waistband, slithering up to her and smirking against her mouth. “Good thing we’re in Germany, then.”

Delphine leans into her, into **Cosima** , and Rachel uses this bit of leverage to push Delphine into the bed. She eyes the camera hidden in the corner, staring directly into the lens and fixes it with a triumphant look before nimbly undoing the Delphine’s trousers, slowly drawing down the zipper as she plays with the dark lace underneath.

“Cosima,” Delphine breathes. Her voice hitches upward as she arches her back and Rachel sinks into her, toying with the soft flesh between her legs.

“I thought you told me French women don’t beg.“ Rachel teases, pinching at Delphine’s thigh, just firmly enough to leave a mark. 

“ _Please_.” Delphine whines underneath her and Rachel feels her blood rush to her head, her heart swell with pride at the thought of this woman who ruined so much whimpering and craving her touch.

Rachel steps back and stares down at Delphine, admiring her triumph. She grins and Delphine matches it, unaware of what is to come. Rachel doesn’t waste any time, she strips Delphine of her clothing and slides herself back down, her knee brushing Delphine’s core.

Rachel thumbs Delphine’s breast, descending her mouth down on it and flicking it with her tongue. She writhes underneath her and into Rachel’s knee, trying to find release.

“Cosima, Cosima.” Delphine whispers the girl’s name like a prayer. She will not find deliverance here, no, only sin.

Rachel places a hand at her shoulder, steadying the taller girl. Rachel will enjoy this; Rachel will take. Delphine will not find release until Rachel allows it.

“Don’t be so eager,” Rachel whispers into the blonde’s ear. She’s too far gone to notice the way that Rachel’s accent slips in, a hint of what’s lingering in the shadows. “It’s been so long—I want to enjoy this.”

Delphine moans as Rachel’s fingers find her clit. She draws slow, lazy circles around the sensitive flesh, careful not to touch it too forcefully. She wants this to linger, she wants Delphine to _suffer_.

Rachel grows tired of watching Delphine’s eyes flutter, of playing with her food around the tenth time Delphine mutters Cosima’s name like it will somehow get Rachel to relent. 

She sinks a finger in, then _two_ , then **three** , and flicks them forward against the warm wall of her pelvis. Delphine’s hips buck under the pressure and just like that the blonde comes apart underneath her.

So _predictable_. So **pathetic**.

Delphine collapses under the weight of her climax and she gently tugs at Rachel’s—no, _Cosima’s_ —hair. “I enjoyed that, but next time, let’s be gentle. I want to savor it.”

Rachel doesn’t say anything. Rachel doesn’t need to say anything.

She will never be gentle.

***

Rachel wakes early the next morning out of habit. She’d prepared the night before, after Delphine had fallen asleep, but she inspects her handiwork to be sure that everything is secure.

Rachel prefers when everything is secure. When it’s all been _handled_. The phone rings and Rachel resists the urge to answer, to whisper into the phone that Delphine is unavailable, that she is _tied up at the moment_.

“Hey—it’s Cosima, and I’m at the airport, but you’re not, so I guess I’ll take a cab? I don’t speak German, so no guarantees. I can’t believe you have an answering machine, pick up your phone—“

“You’re not her. You’re not Cosima.” Delphine states as she comes into waking. She jerks up from the bed and her eyes grow wide when she realizes that she’s got plastic zip ties binding her to the bedposts, unable to escape.

“No,” Rachel admits, allowing her natural voice to slip through her disguise. “No, I am not, Doctor Cormier.”

“You—you—“

“Quiet,” Rachel seethes, glaring at the blonde woman. “I don’t care to hear your protests after the fact. You enjoyed every minute of what happened last night.”

“You are sick! You are sick and—“

“I am what Dyad made me.” Rachel hisses, her mouth dangerously close to Delphine’s ear as she tightens the restraints. Before she can think better of it, Rachel bites down on her earlobe, taking it between her teeth and sucking the thin flesh so hard it leaves a mark, a reminder to them both that she was _here_. “Nothing more.”

“What do you want with me?”

“What do you _think_?”

Delphine looks at her with that insufferable expression that Rachel remembers all too well. Childlike innocence and fragility—Rachel would have expected by now the good doctor had grown out of this behavior, and yet here they were. She has yet to meet another doctor so unaware and easily fooled.

Delphine answers her question with silence and Rachel tsks and shifts her body slightly, until she is staring Delphine in the face. The problem, she realizes, is that Delphine _doesn’t_ think. So she will have to spell it out for her.

“How did you expect me to react to your insubordination?”

“Please—“

“Please. How different that word sounds when you are begging for your _life_.” Rachel snaps, not in the mood to listen to Delphine’s cries. It is one thing when they are silent, when she is silent. It is quite another when they make a sound. It ruins the mood.

Rachel does not like the mood to be ruined.

“My life—you will not, you **cannot** do this.”

“Do what? Kill you? No. That would be far too kind,” Rachel clarifies. Delphine instantly relaxes against her restraints and Rachel’s mouth lifts up at the corners. Delphine missed the last part of what she’d said, all for the best, really. Rachel will enjoy this far more if Delphine comes to realize the depths of her ruin slowly. 

“You do not plan to kill me?” Delphine gasps, her eyes wide—really, how can Cosima stand this woman? She is so gullible, so easily manipulated and brought to her doom.

“No, I do not.” Rachel confirms, and then decides to go about it the long way. “Do you know, Doctor Cormier, that my mother died in a lab explosion?”

“N—“

“Of course not. The man who killed my mother—he raised me. I was ordered to kill him, you know?”

“Aldous?“

“Yes—Aldous.” Rachel sighs and Delphine looks at her with those doe eyes, as if she is starting to realize that she is **not** safe here. Good. Let her worry. “I didn’t kill him, for what it’s worth.”

“And do you know, Doctor Cormier, that my father committed suicide in front of me?”

“What? I do not—“

“You’re not paying attention. There is a trend to all of this, Doctor Cormier. One that you appear far too simple to have figured out,” Rachel snaps. Rachel does not have to _explain_. Rachel does not have to make Delphine _understand_.

She simply **wants** to.

Rachel bends down to stare at Delphine—vulnerable, captured, Delphine—and uses her thumb to brush away her tears. Delphine trembles under her touch and Rachel resists the urge to take her again. To let her know exactly what Delphine is, who she _belongs_ to.

Rachel instead puts her thumb in her mouth, sucking on the salty taste of the Frenchwoman’s tears. Delphine looks at her with a mix of desire and fear which only fuels her more.

“I did not want these men; these guardians. They were inadequate,” Rachel explains. “I wanted one thing, Doctor Cormier, and you took it from me.”

“I did no such—“

“Without your text, I would have won. I would have had everything I wanted, that _Dyad_ wanted, and you could have lived the rest of your pathetic little life in peace.”

“You took her from me! I had to save her—“

“And save her you did. At the expense of my eye, in fact.”

“What?” 

“No matter,” Rachel waves off her question. It doesn’t matter, in the end. Delphine does merit an explanation. Delphine does not merit a discussion on her greatest failure. “I am alive, despite your efforts.”

“What do you want?”

“Nothing, Delphine,” Rachel answers. She doesn’t want anything, not now, not when the only thing she’d wanted is lost to her. (She will not carry a child. She will not have a child. She will not be happy.) “I want **_nothing_**.”

Rachel does not want (not anymore. Rachel does not want anymore). Rachel does not hope. Rachel _acts_.

“Then why—“

“What do you think Cosima will say when learns what occurred here?” Rachel asks, floating the question as a hypothetical, not _reality_ , not a **threat**. “Will she forgive you? Knowing that you cannot tell her apart from her sisters.”

“You tricked me—you used me.”

“Yes,” Rachel agrees. She did trick Delphine. She did toy with Delphine. “And you enjoyed every second.”

Delphine says nothing, still bound to the bed, still _naked under the sheets_. She simply stares at her with her chin turned upward, her mouth trembling.

But she does not deny that she _wants_ this; that she **craves** this; that she **_fears_** this. 

“Please, Rachel. You cannot tell her,” Delphine begs, a fresh set of tears slipping her cheek. “This will—this will destroy her.”

“I’m _counting_ on it,” Rachel stresses, raising a manicured eyebrow, daring Delphine to challenge her. “How long until she comes to see you, Delphine? Hmm? What will she make of this? Will she absolve you of your sins? I think not.”

Cosima was involved, Cosima used _Kira_ to draw that picture of a fire hydrant. Rachel hadn’t thought much about it at the time, too focused on her impending victory that she was blinded by what came after.

“You’ve been unfaithful, Delphine. And worst of all, you cannot tell her apart from the rest. It’s all _Project Leda_ in the end. And Cosima will never forgive you for it.”

_Cosima will **suffer**._

“You are cruel,” Delphine sobs. As if this matters, as if it will change her course of action. It will not. Her plans are in motion—she has _acted_ , she has _taken_ , she has _laid claim_.

“Am I?” Rachel asks, unconcerned with Delphine’s answer. Instead she leans over Delphine and twirls a curl between her fingers while using her other hand to pinch her breast. Delphine jumps at the contact. “I let you _climax_.”

“But don’t worry, Delphine. I won’t _tell_ Cosima what occurred between us. No, _ma chienne_ , I will **show** her.”

Without another word, she slips out of her undergarments (designer—always the best for _Rachel_ ), and balls the silk into a fist. They smell of conquest, of domination, of **_power_**.

She has missed that particular aroma.

“Rachel, what are you doing?”

“Just a little something for you to remember me by,” she leers, inches from Delphine’s face. She lowers her lips to Delphine’s, pressing down, laying claim to her prize.

Delphine sinks her teeth into her bottom lip and Rachel slaps her across the face. The metallic taste of blood, her blood, on her tongue sticks with Rachel as she feels Delphine’s eyes on her, defiant.

She quite likes this bit of fire. She’ll like extinguishing it more.

Her nails dig into the bound woman’s jaw, forcing it open. Delphine writhes underneath her, her body jutting up and down under the white sheet, trying desperately to break free. But Rachel hasn’t left anything to chance. Zip ties work far better than handcuffs, and the marks they leave behind serve as a reminder of Delphine’s transgressions.

Delphine opens her mouth just enough and Rachel shoves her bottoms into the French woman’s mouth, gagging her. She steps backward and admires her handiwork.

She is _very_ proud of herself. Doctor Cormier bound and gagged with a bit of black silk between her lips.

Delphine has never looked as beautiful as she does now.

“You forget, Doctor Cormier, you signed a contract. I _own_ you, Dyad _owns_ you, just like we own Cosima,” Rachel adds. “You are property— **my** property. It is time you both learn what that truly means.”

Rachel smirks as Delphine’s eyes widen in fear at her words. She then fetches the recording and hits play, ensuring that it plays on a loop. No matter when Cosima arrives, she will see all that has occurred. And Delphine will have to watch, will have to remember, the way that her back arched under Rachel’s touch. The desperate way that she ground against Rachel’s skin, desperate to have her inside of her.

Desperate to have Rachel _corrupt_ her.

“I’ll see myself out,” she says, turning on her heel. She walks out of the apartment with a grin on her face, ensuring that the door is ajar so that Cosima can find Delphine exactly where Rachel had left her.

While this might not be the _new perspective_ Marion had intended, she has a new vantage point nonetheless. To the victor go the spoils, and Rachel knows that she has spoiled things indeed.


End file.
